Skip to content

CMA Intermediate · Financial Management and Business Data Analytics · Data Processing, Organisation, Cleaning and Validation

A finance team receives sales data in which the 'Region' column holds 'North', 'north' and 'NORTH ' (with a trailing space) for the same region. Which data preparation step is best applied first so that regional totals are not split across several groups?

Standardising the text by trimming spaces and using one uniform case is the correct step. It makes all variants of 'North' identical, so grouping and summing give a single regional total instead of splitting the figures across several separate categories.

  1. AStandardise the text by trimming spaces and applying a uniform caseCorrect
  2. BDelete the Region column from the dataset
  3. CConvert the Region column into numeric sales values
  4. DSort the data in descending order of sales

Explanation

Different spellings, cases and trailing spaces make a grouping tool treat one region as several categories. Trimming and applying one case merges them. Sorting only reorders rows and does not merge categories, and deleting the column loses the information.

Did you get it right without looking?

One question tells you little. A timed set on Data Processing, Organisation, Cleaning and Validation shows your real accuracy, how long you take and where you lose marks.

Practise Data Processing, Organisation, Cleaning and ValidationFree diagnostic mock

More Data Processing, Organisation, Cleaning and Validation questions